Posts tagged as romantic comedies

"But it's a genre that's near and dear to my heart, and I just thought that there's a freedom in British sitcoms for characters to not always be 'broadcast likable,' and thus I thought it would be a nice way to take a show like Mad About You and update it in terms of how young society behaves now and also to bring in some characters that are actually kind of shitheads at times. It's a tall order to make people fall in love with people who are kind of dicks, but I thought it would be worth trying, and I think it has been."

We are in a confoundingly complex point in gender relations, as evidenced by the number of books, NPR stories and articles on the subject. But while everyone is talking about the problem, no one has focused on the root of the problem, which is actually quite simple. From the late 1960s on, girls (for the first time in history) were raised to play sports, go to college and become independent, career-focused adults (more like boys). Baby Boomer parents changed the way they raised their daughters, but they did not change the way they raised their sons. As a result women now act more like men, but men are behaving as [...]

Bridesmaids director and Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig gave details about a new movie he's developing to reporters at a dinner party to promote the DVD release of his latest movie, The Heat, last night. The movie is a gay romantic-comedy, and he wants Channing Tatum and new SNL featured player John Milhiser (who Feig originally introduced to Lorne Michaels) for the lead roles, according to Cinema Blend. The untitled film involves an average guy who doesn't understand why a super attractive dude is dating him. Vultureis quick to point out that Tatum isn't actually attached to the project, hasn't even met with Feig about it, and [...]

Here's the trailer for Five-Year Engagment, written by Jason Segal and Nicholas Stoller and starring Segal and Emily Blunt, set for release April 27. The trailer alone includes one party with champagne, one couple falling into a snowdrift, one twinkly-lit rooftop, and one scene of the couple running towards each other, which together earn it an official rom-com cuteness badge. It should be exciting to see if Segal and Stoller can breathe new life into the petrified corpse of the American romantic comedy. The movie also features Chris Pratt along with one Ms. Alison Brie talking in a British accent, so in the words of Splitsider El Hefe Adam [...]

Will our lust for wedding-related humor ever be satiated? Or will an eternity of nuptial humor pour forever into the bouquet-shaped hollow in our souls? Will Ferrell and Adam McKay are banking on the latter, as their Gary Sanchez Productions will be funding the new indie comedy Bachelorette, which stars Casey Wilson as a demanding bride, and Lizzy Caplan and Kirsten Dunst as her bridesmaids. Caplan's character is described as having "a Playboy Bunny body with a Larry David brain," which would be amazing if that actually meant "self-deprecating neurotic comedy genius" rather than just "sarcastic" as I'm assuming it does. Adam Scott will also be appearing [...]

"Annie Hall is pretty amazing. A lot of the Woody Allen ones are pretty great, but I also love Defending Your Life. Lost in America. Albert Brooks has some — Albert Brooks had a series of movies back-to-back that rivaled just about anything."

-Paul Rudd, in a Vulture piece in which he, Amy Poehler, Ellie Kemper, Jason Mantzoukas, and writer/director David Wain, all from the soon-to-be-released romantic comedy satire They Came Together, rattle off their favorite rom-coms.

As the current wisdom goes: Men are stubborn; women are flexible. "It's the 'Will you hold my purse?' theory," Feig explains. "A guy's in a store with his wife or girlfriend and she asks him to hold her purse, it's, like, Kryptonite or something. They have to hold it so that no one around them thinks it's theirs. But if a guy says to his wife or girlfriend, 'Can you hold my backpack?' she's like, 'Sure.' She doesn't give a shit. I think Hollywood banks on that."

Granted, Free Agents' over-jazzed slickness and failure to characterize its protagonists are not issues for Bent. Nope, the characterizations of Pete (David Walton) and Alex (Amanda Peet) are hammered in pretty hard: she's an uptight lawyer from NorCal with a kid and an ex-husband in white collar prison; he's a man-whoring, surfing contracter from SoCal [...]

In Mindy Kaling's "Flick Chicks," part of this week's New Yorker, the Office writer explains her love for the bizarre, deeply unnatural beings that populate modern rom-coms. "I regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world operates according to different rules than my regular human world," she explains. "For me, there is no difference between Ripley from Alien and any Katherine Heigl character. They are equally implausible."

Kaling also identifies a host of inscrutable alien entities like the Klutz, the Ethereal Weirdo and the unrealistically young rom-com mom. "[W]hen 'Mom' was an adolescent, the very week she started to menstruate she was impregnated [...]

Here's Jason Segel on Five-Year Engagement, the movie he's currently writing: "It is a romantic comedy. Our goal is Annie Hall or When Harry Met Sally and if we get within their stratosphere of substance, we will be happy. It really dissects relationships and aims to show how complicated they are over a long period of time. This is a five-year period and in that time things change and morph and the power dynamic shifts and people wane and eyes wonder and you question everything and this movie is about that in a funny way, I hope."

Judy Greer (Arrested Development, Archer) has played the thankless best friend part in romantic comedies like 13 Going on 30 and 27 Dresses, but now, in this new Funny Or Die sketch, she's playing the same rom-com best friend but finally gets to show her side of the story.

Simon Pegg and Lake Bell have been cast opposite each other in an upcoming romantic comedy called Man Up, Deadline reports. The plot involves a single woman (Bell) who is mistaken for a stranger's (Pegg) blind date on her way to her parents' anniversary but ends up finding him to be the perfect guy for her. It's the first feature written by UK writer Tess Morris. Ben Palmer, who directed the bulk of the episodes of the UK series The Inbetweeners as well as The Inbetweeners Movie, is directing Man Up. Pegg is producing via his company Big Talk.

Chris Rock says he's been writing a script for him and Melissa McCarthy to play a "Jerry Springer couple." I don't know, Chris Rock, with this and your suggestions of touring with Dave Chappelle, I'm getting a little suspicious that you have been reading my dream journal and trying to recreate its contents to make me go insane with excitement. Next thing you know you'll be planning a sitcom pilot about me playing volleyball against the cast of Saved by the Bell and then realizing I'm not wearing a shirt.

As the director himself explains, Woody Allen's next rom-com is jammed packed with talent. Mostly his. "The greatest of all my favorites — me. I'm going to be in it, too," Allen said, responding to casting rumors. "I'm still casting and I'm sure there will be some others." Well, certainly. We didn't think Woody would be able play the busty blond at the same time. Though, now that we think about it…

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